Judicial review of expert committee decisions in academic matters is limited; courts cannot interfere unless findings are proven wrong beyond reasonable doubt.

ORDER :

Learned counsel for the parties are in agreement that the issue involve in this matter has also been considered and decided by the Co-ordinate Bench of this Court in the matter of Dr. Lipsa Meena and Anr. Vs. Principle Secretary, Department of Medical, Health And Family Welfare passed in D.B. Special Appeal Writ No. 761/2024 decided on 28.01.2025, wherein the following order was passed:-

“These appeals have been filed on behalf of the appellants/petitioners challenging the judgment dated 05.12.2024 passed by the learned Single Judge in S.B. Civil Writ Petition No.14832/2024 along with other connected writ petitions.

Brief facts of the case are that in pursuance to the advertisement dated 31.05.2024 issued by the respondents for appointment on the post of Medical Officer (Dental) the appellants/petitioners applied for appointment on the said post. After the examination was conducted the result was declared on 18.07.2024 and on the same date, the respondents issued a Modal Answer Key and invited the objections, if any, from the applicants. In pursuance thereto, all the appellants/petitioners submitted their objections and in total as per reply submitted on behalf of the respondents, 61 grievances were received for correctness/deletion/change of answer for 61 questions. Thereafter, the respondents constituted an expert committee and the said expert committee accepted 16 grievances for 16 questions and as per report submitted by the expert committee, the respondents have implemented the recommendations made by the expert committee and declared the result accordingly. All the appellants/petitioners filed writ petitions stating therein that the expert committee has wrongly considered the grievance with regard to Questions No.98, 94, 19 & 38.

Learned counsel for the appellants/petitioners submit that the expert committee failed to consider their objections properly and learned Single Judge has also not considered the books referred by them in support of their contentions while arguing the matter before the learned Single Judge. He further submits that learned Single Judge should have referred the matter to the independent expert committee. He further submits that the action of the respondents is in violation of principles of natural justice and if the result is revised by further referring the matter to the independent expert committee, the petitioners will have chance of success in getting the appointment. He further submits that allegation of mala-fide is not necessary to be alleged in the writ petition.

Learned counsel for the appellants/petitioners relied upon the judgment passed by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in the matter of Ranvijay Singh Vs. State of U.P.; Civil Appeal No.367/2017, decided on 11.12.2017, which reads as under:

“33. The facts of the case before us indicate that in the first instance the learned Single Judge took it upon himself to actually ascertain the correctness of the key answer to seven questions. This was completely beyond his jurisdiction and as decided by this Court on several occasions, the exercise carried out was impermissible. Fortunately, the Division Bench did not repeat the error but in a sense, endorsed the view of the learned Single Judge, by not considering the decisions of this Court but sending four key answers for consideration by a one man Expert Committee.

34. Having come to the conclusion that the High Court (the learned Single Judge as well as the Division Bench) ought to have been far more circumspect in interfering and deciding on the correctness of the key answers, the situation today is that there is a third evaluation of the answer sheets and a third set of results is now ready for declaration. Given this scenario, the options before us are to nullify the entire re-evaluation process and depend on the result declared on 14^th September, 2010 or to go by the third set of results. Cancelling the examination is not an option. Whichever option is chosen, there will be some candidates who